Huawei may have already won several hearts over this year with its beautiful P20 Pro but the Chinese manufacturer isn’t done yet. Like rivals LG with its V series and Samsung with its Note series, Huawei also releases two flagship smartphone ranges a year.

Generally revealed towards the latter half of the year, the Huawei Mate series has traditionally offered plenty. Last year we saw the arrival of the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, succeeding the Mate 9, but this year it is thought the new Mate will stray away from the sequential number naming to go by the name Mate 20.

Here is everything rumoured so far for the Huawei Mate 20, together with our own speculation.

The Mate series is typically the larger of Huawei’s flagship smartphone ranges. The Mate 10 features a metal core sandwiched between robust tempered glass, offering a lovely premium design.

It isn’t waterproof, though the Pro model is, and it features slim bezels at the top and bottom of the display, along with a fingerprint sensor at the bottom.

We’d expect the Mate 20 to continue with the premium design found on the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, though it is likely to adopt waterproofing and perhaps the notch design of the P20 and P20 Pro.

If this is the case, the Mate 20 could ditch the bezel above the display in favour of a small notch within the display itself for the camera, while retaining the bezel below for the fingerprint sensor.

The Mate 10 measures 150.5 x 77.8 x 8.2mm and weighs 186g while the Mate 10 Pro measures 154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9mm and weighs 178g. The Mate 20 will likely be similar in footprint, even if it features a larger display as rumours have suggested.

The Huawei Mate 10 has a 5.9-inch display with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio and a 2560 x 1440 resolution, while the Mate 10 Pro has a 6-inch display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a 2160 x 1080 resolution.

With most flagship smartphones adopting the 18:9 aspect ratio, or thereabouts, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Mate 20 do the same. It has been reported the Mate 20 will feature a 6.9-inch OLED screen, made by Samsung Display.

The resolution of the panel has yet to be revealed though it has been claimed they are flat panels rather than curved and that Samsung Display will be supplying them to Huawei in the third quarter of 2018, which would tie in with the expected Mate 20 launch.

A 6.9-inch display on the Mate 20 would of course be an inch larger than the Mate 10 it would replace but with the adoption of the 18:9 aspect ratio, the footprint of the device should remain similar. The Mate 10 also has an LCD display over AMOLED so the colours should be richer and more vibrant on the Mate 20 if the rumours are accurate. Expect HDR10 compatibility too.

The Huawei Mate 10 comes with Leica-branded dual rear cameras. There’s a 12-megapixel colour sensor with an optically stabilised f/1.6 27mm equivalent lens, coupled with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor with the same lens but no optical stabilisation.

This year’s Huawei P20 also sees a Leica-branded dual rear camera setup but the P20 Pro features three Leica cameras on the rear, made up of a 40-megapixel RGB sensor, 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and an 8-megapixel 3x optical zoom camera. The P20 devices also both offer a 24-megapixel front camera compared to the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro’s 8-megapixel offering.

Whether the Mate 20 will adopt the P20 Pro’s camera setup on the rear or stick with a dual setup remains to be seen for now, but expect a big focus on this area again. We’d expect the P20’s 24-megapixel front camera to make an appearance on the Mate 20, even if the triple setup is reserved for the Mate 20 Pro, assuming Huawei introduces two Mate models again.

The Huawei Mate 20 will no doubt improve on the Mate 10 in terms of its hardware specifications, as all succeeding flagships do.

The Mate 10 runs on the Kirin 970 CPU with Mali G72 GPU and it comes with 4GB of RAM, while the Mate 10 Pro has 6GB. There is 64GB of storage in the Mate 10 with microSD support for storage expansion and a 4000mAh battery runs the show.

The Mate 20 will no doubt opt for the latest Kirin processor, or the Kirin 970, which is used in the P20 and P20 Pro and we wouldn’t be surprised to see an increase to 6GB of RAM, like the P20 Pro and Mate 10 Pro. Whether the Mate 20 will ditch microSD support like the P20 devices is unclear for now, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see an increase in internal storage either way and dual SIM is also expected.

A large battery capacity is likely to remain for the Mate 20 too as it has done for all preceding Mate devices, but we’d hope to see wireless charging introduced, a feature still missing from Huawei devices, even in the case of the P20 and P20 Pro.

The Huawei P20 and P20 Pro run on EMUI 8.1 but the Mate 20 will likely launch with new features on top of what these devices already offer. What these features will be remains to be seen for now but expect a number of leaks to appear over the next couple of months, some of which may give us a better indication of what to expect from the Mate 20.

For now, read all about the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro to see what Huawei’s current 2018 flagships offer.